BibleWorm

This week we’re reading the story of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan as told in 2 Samuel 11:1-11, 14-18, 26-27; 12:1-10; and Psalm 51:1-12. David, once a man of the people, has become a self-satisfied king, feeling entitled to whatever he wants. This leads him first to taking Bathsheba by force and then murdering her husband Uriah to cover it up. We wrestle with what it is in David that makes him do such awful things, and whether he has any sense of shame remaining. We ponder the role of the prophet Nathan, who uses a seemingly unrelated story to get David to recognize the error of his ways and ultimately condemn himself. And we read Psalm 51, understood in the biblical text as David’s prayer to God following the Bathsheba encounter. We find ourselves not wanting to allow David to use this prayer, as awful as he has been. But ultimately we recognize that repentance and forgiveness is available to all—even to David, and to those we despise the most, and even to us ourselves.